The American Sephardi Federation and The Sousa Mendes Foundation present:

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Jewish Refugees She Saved: The Story of the S. S. Quanza
 The New York première of the documentary film, Nobody Wants Us

Sunday, 11 August at 2:00PM

Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street
New York City

General admission: $20
Sponsor ticket: $120 includes VIP luncheon at 12:30 PM. 
$100 of this ticket price is tax-deductible.  
Money raised will help bring the film and educational materials into schools throughout the United States.

Please RSVP here
or call: 1.800.838.3006

Synopsis:
In 1940, a ship called the S.S. Quanza left the port of Lisbon carrying several hundred Jewish refugees, most of whom held Sousa Mendes visas to freedom.  But events went terribly wrong, and the passengers became trapped on the ship because no country would take them in.  Nobody Wants Us tells the gripping true story of how Eleanor Roosevelt herself stepped in to save the passengers on board because of her moral conviction that they were not undesirables (as the US State Department labeled them) but rather were future patriotic Americans.  This is an episode in American history that everyone needs to know.

Program:
The film, which is 35 minutes in length, will be introduced by the filmmaker Laura Seltzer-Duny and followed by a panel discussion moderated by Michael Dobbs of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and author of The Unwanted. 

Other participants will include:
Blanche Wiesen Cook, the leading world expert on Eleanor Roosevelt and the author of her three-volume biography.

Annette Lachmann, who was a passenger on the Quanza in 1940.

Kathleen Rand, whose father, Wolf Rand, was the passenger who successfully filed suit against the shipping company, forcing the vessel to remain in port until the conflict was resolved.

Stephen Morewitz, the leading world expert on the Quanza story, whose grandparents’ Norfolk, Virginia law firm of Morewitz & Morewitz was hired by Wolf Rand and successfully litigated the case.

Significance of the story:
According to Michael Dobbs, the Quanza incident is a timely reminder that individuals make a difference.  Without visas supplied by the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, many of the Jewish passengers on board the Quanza might well have been stranded in Nazi-occupied Europe.  Without the legal brilliance of a maritime lawyer named Jacob Morewitz, the ship would have been obliged to sail back to Europe. Without the intervention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the passengers would not have been permitted to land.  It took three people, from entirely different backgrounds, to save dozens of lives that might otherwise have been lost.

The American Sephardi Federation & Consulate General of Spain at New York present:

Visados para la Libertad (Visas for Freedom)

On view until August

Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street
New York City

“The history of the Holocaust is not merely one of villains and their victims. There were also those who did not want to stand idly by in the face of tragedy; driven by their conscience, they decided to take action. Among these are the heroes, those who risked, or even sacrificed, their own lives to save others. However, there is also another group of individuals, whose actions behind the scenes, albeit more modest, are no less deserving of remembrance and tribute. They took advantage of the scope of Influence offered by their position or profession to protect and help, as far as was at all possible, Jews condemned to extermination in Europe.”

Embracing the Rituals of a Moroccan Wedding

A Joan Roth Photographic Journey, which opened on 17 June as part of The Morocco Conference (Uncommon Commonalities: Jews and Muslims of Morocco), continues in the
Leon Levy Gallery

On view until September

Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street 
New York City

About the Photographer
In addition to Morocco, Joan Roth traveled to Ethiopia before Operation Moses and again afterwards, Yemen, Bukhara, India, Israel, and photographed extensively in the United States. Her photographs of Jewish women are published, exhibited, and collected by museums and collectors worldwide. Some of Joan’s photographs are published in the book: Jewish Women: A world of Tradition and Change (Jolen Press, 1995).

Gloria Steinem has written the following appreciation: “Joan Roth has looked at the Jewish world as if women mattered, and therefore as if everyone mattered. Across all the boundaries of geography and language, there is not only a common world of belief, but a common world of women. We see into its intimacy through her eyes.” 
 
Roth richly depicts the personal and historical dimensions of these women as they preserve and adapt centuries-old traditions amid varied cultural surroundings. The effect, in the words of Rocky Mountain art critic Mary Voltz Chandler, “is like opening a jewelry box filled with so many secrets women know but never told each other.”